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Stroud District Councillor Brian Tipper (C, Cam East) believes Cam was taken advantage of in the early planning stages and that this has lead to far too many houses being allocated to the village.

"Cam has had enough," he said.

Mr Tipper's main concern was a stretch of green land running along Box Road which is possibly due to be wiped out by the development.

"We are already at logger heads with the highways in regards to the width of the road and the environment. Just the overall effect of it. There is further development going to take down there and we are resisting that.

"From an environment point of view, it's going against the grain. Saying that back in 2009 when the land was originally bought, the land was needed. When the original 1,400 were put forward."

"To a point, I think agreeing readily to planning in the first place, we shot ourselves in the foot. We were being seen to be 'easy meat'. I can tell you right now that Cam Parish Council has resisted strongly to all the applications outside the local plan, outside green field sites in particular."

He went on to say that affordable homes for young people was paramount but should be built along bus routes and not on rural land, throwing doubts on the fact that the houses that will be developed along farmland will be of use to young people.

Cam Peak

Stroud District Councillor Doina Cornell (L, Dursley), leader of the district council, pointed out that the local planning strategy was actually constrained by the fact that half the Stroud district is classed as an area of outstanding natural beauty.

"We are very much left with a corridor along the M5. We are really trying to take account of that and put housing in areas that don't impact the rural community," she said.

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She says they are planning a large settlement in Sharpness that will re-generate the area and she claims won't impact the rural area.

However in general she is against the major developments as she doesn't believe it will benefit local residents.

"We are in principle against it because we don't understand the rationale behind it.

Dursley (Image: Bob Faraway)

"As far as we understand, the thinking seems to be that it could help to effect house prices by bringing house prices down - but the way I see if we build more houses, more people will move in from outside the area and house prices will remain quite high. They have risen a lot in the area and it doesn't really help local people."

She went on to say that she is very much in favour of more housing generally but there needs to be "more of dialogue" between local and central government before an allocation is made.

In regards to how the environment will be effected, she said: "More houses mean more traffic, so we will be seeing more cars on the road. Public transport isn't good enough, so an increase in the roads around here, which are all quite small, that would make an impact. Not to mention, rising air pollution.

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Stroud District Council sent results from a study conducted by Sheffield University which found that only 6% of Stroud District is currently built on.

Prestently 80% of the district is farmland, 11% is natural land and 3% is green areas within urban areas.

Future planned growth will see the built-up areas figure increase by less than 1%.

(Image: @TarkId=8886530)

A council spokesperson said: “A Government-calculated target of a minimum of 12,800 new homes in the district by 2040 means some new developments have to be proposed in the Local Plan Emerging Strategy, on which we have consulted extensively – and no sites have been confirmed at this stage.

“The target is driven by a high need and relatively high cost of housing in the Stroud district. So far, 7,100 of the 12,800 have planning permission, so we have to allocate sites for around 5,700 new homes. If the target is not met, Stroud District Council could lose control over where development goes, to central Government and developers."

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An online petition with over 3,481 signatures has been signed opposing the developments.

The spokesperson went on to say: “There will be three more consultation opportunities before the Local Plan is adopted in 2022 and it will be debated by Council.

“Petitions with signatures of more than 1,100 relating to matters such as the Local Plan will be referred to the Council chair and leader to determine with a senior officer whether the matter should be responded to by a senior officer, or referred to Council to debate.”